Timothy Zahn - Blackcollar - The Judas Solution

"And they obviously know it," Lathe said. "I see they've got a complete double wall around it."

"With plenty of room between the layers for pressurized gas traps, antipersonnel explosives, or even a few roaming khassq if they feel so inclined," Shaw said grimly. "You can also bet they've got more autotarget lasers set up outside the doors, ready to turn the last five or ten meters of corridor into a killing zone."

"Only three doors into the place, too," Judas commented. "What about these three narrow rooms wrapped around the big central one?"

"One of them will be the base's main security monitor room," Shaw said. "This one, probably, from the number of secure display conduits we saw them putting in the walls. The other two are probably a guard room and a lounge for the command officers."

"Seems horribly inefficient," Judas said, studying the three wide corridors that led from the perimeter corridor to the central circle and its wraparound rooms and the five sets of cross corridors cutting across them. "With an octagonal shape, wouldn't it make more sense to parallel that design on the inside? Or at the very least to go with a four-sided corridor/room pattern instead of a triangular one?"

"They probably borrowed it from one of their victims," Lathe said. "They borrow everyone else's technology. Why not their architecture, too?"

"Anyway, that's the overview," Shaw said. "We've also got a little more detail on some of the areas—"

"Why the first floor?" Mordecai interrupted, gazing at the diagram.

"Excuse me?" Shaw asked.

"Probably because the second floor's more exposed to air attacks," Judas explained, frowning. Even to him that one seemed obvious.

"I meant why on the surface at all?" Mordecai said. "Why not put it underground? We know the ground can be dug into—they've got tunnels leading to the fence bunkers."

"He's got a point," Lathe agreed, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "For that matter, why not put the whole base underground?"

"For starters, underground facilities take a lot longer to build," Shaw pointed out. But he, too, was frowning down at the paper.

"Or the place may not be as valuable as they want us to believe," Mordecai said.

There was another silence, a longer one this time. Surreptitiously, Judas looked at each of the others in turn, his heart pounding uncomfortably. If they gave up now, this whole thing would have been for nothing.

And if that happened, there was no telling what might happen to his family back in Interlaken. Galway had promised them safety and security, but the unspoken condition was that Galway would continue to be in a position where he could make good on that guarantee. If the mission failed, the Plinry prefect wasn't likely to remain in the Ryqril's good graces for long.

To his relief, Lathe shook his head. "No," he said. "Haberdae must have deduced by now that Khorstron is the reason we're here. If they didn't care whether or not we got in, they wouldn't have tried to take us out of the game last night."

Judas breathed a quiet sigh of relief. "Besides, as you said earlier, Lepkowski's already gone to tell the Chryselli about it," he added. "We have to get inside."

"Right," Lathe agreed. "So let's quit worrying about why Ryqril do things the way they do and concentrate on how we're going to get in there. Tactor?"

"Okay," Shaw said, selecting another roll of paper. "This one's a closer look at the west door area...."

Neatly framed in the center of the display was a wide rectangular post, a meshwork pattern extending out from it on both sides. "It's one of the Khorstron fence posts," Haberdae identified it. "So?"

"Just keep watching," Galway told him. "Especially the upper third."

"Galway, I don't have time for gam—"

He broke off in midword as a gray projectile suddenly shot in from the edge of the display and slapped into the upper part of the fence post, the impact flattening it into a misshapen blob. "What the hell?"

Haberdae muttered.

"You were wondering earlier where Spadafora had disappeared to?" Galway gestured to the display.

"There you go."

"There I go where?" Haberdae growled. "What the hell is that?"

"A small piece of plutonium embedded in a putty-like substance, delivered via slingshot by a blackcollar sharpshooter," Galway told him. "That was the fifteenth he's landed on the post since dawn. The fifteenth we've noticed, anyway—he might have sent in more of them before we caught on. You can see how well the putty matches the color of the post."

"And this is in aid of what?" Haberdae asked. "I trust you're not going to suggest there's enough radiation in there to decrystalize the metal of the post and bring it down."

"No, of course, not," Galway said. "But if you place the pellets over critical sensor or sonic net electronics—and all fifteen of them are over such places—there's more than enough radiation to begin slowly degrading them. Fairly unnoticeable, too, since the diagnostic sensors are being scrambled at the same time."

Haberdae looked sharply at Galway, then back at the display, then a little less truculently at Galway.

"How slow are we talking about?"

"I don't know yet," Galway said. "Hours, or a low number of days. The techs are researching that now.

The point is that they've actively started their plan."

"I guess so," Haberdae said, scratching his chin. "So where is he?"

"We're not sure about that, either." Galway gestured to the tech, who tapped his control board. With dizzying speed, the view on the display pulled back from the fence post and settled down into an overall view of the southwest quadrant of the Khorstron area. "Here's the affected post," he said, touching a spot on the southwest part of the fence. "We're guessing he's in a camouflage setup in or near one of the trees over here to the south of the base." He ran a hand over a thirty-degree arc through the forested area outside the fence. "There's also this abandoned shack over here, along with this shed, either of which he could also be using."

"He'd have to shoot a hundred meters from either of those buildings," Haberdae objected. "And through that whole patch of forest on top of it."

"As I said, he's a sharpshooter," Galway reminded him. "Which is why he's here instead of one of the others. Neither Lathe nor Mordecai has anywhere near the necessary skill with a slingshot."

"But a hundred meters?"

"Actually, I don't think he's that far away," Galway said. "I'm guessing he's somewhere in the woods.

Unfortunately, no one saw him get in there and set up shop, and the pellets themselves are too small to get a decent trajectory vector from. And we certainly don't want to send in a team that might spook him."

"No, of course not," Haberdae said darkly. "We want them to feel nice and safe for their little raid."

"Actually, yes, we do."

"That's what I said," Haberdae insisted. "Did you think I was being sarcastic?"

Actually, Galway wasn't sure what kind of tone that had been. But there'd been something there, something nasty lurking beneath the surface. "No, of course not."

"Good." Haberdae nodded toward the display. "Let me know as soon as you have an idea how long it'll take for them to wreck the sensor system. I want to know when they'll be ready to move."

The public phone Skyler had specified was on a busy corner squarely in the middle of downtown lunchtime traffic. Poirot arrived two minutes early and stood to the side, watching the passing pedestrians and cars and feeling decidedly uncomfortable in his civilian clothing.

The phone rang, and Poirot scooped up the handset. "Yes?"

"You alone?" Skyler's voice came back.

With an effort, Poirot forced himself not to look at the van parked half a block away where Bailey and his tech team were monitoring the call. "I'm on a street corner in Denver," he countered instead. "How alone can I be?"